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Humanizing a Superhero: an Empirical Test in the Comic Books Industry

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Humanizing a Superhero: an Empirical Test in the Comic Books Industry International Business Research; Vol. 9, No. 11; 2016 ISSN 1913-9004 E-ISSN 1913-9012 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education Humanizing a Superhero: An Empirical Test in the Comic Books Industry Michela Addis1, Gabriele Troilo2 1Michela Addis, University of Rome 3, Rome, Italy 2Gabriele Troilo, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy Correspondence: Michela Addis, Economics Department, University of Rome 3, Via Silvio D‟Amico 77, 00145 Rome, Italy. E-mail: [email protected] Received: August 24, 2016 Accepted: September 18, 2016 Online Published: October 17, 2016 doi:10.5539/ibr.v9n11p189 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ibr.v9n11p189 Abstract One of the most firmly-established and widespread marketing policies in the comic book industry is the humanization of superheroes as a strategy to achieve success, especially for characters populating the Marvel Universe. However, there is no clear evidence of how exactly artists actually and operatively create human superheroes, and whether those variables truly affect sales of comic books. To address those two issues we run a quali-quantitative study by interviewing experts, and regressing sales on a broad range of variables of comic books gathered through content analysis and secondary data sources. Our findings show that humanization is not as powerful as expected in driving sales of comic books. Keywords: comic books, content analysis, human superheroes, regression analysis, success 1. Introduction Comic books are one of the most popular entertainment forms in the world. The comic-publishing industry has a long tradition, albeit only in few countries like Japan, France, Italy, the USA and Mexico (Mayfield, Mayfield, & Genestre, 2001). But today in many other places as well the comics market is a considerable size, given the huge flow of exports that add up to smaller local productions, providing millions of consumers around the globe with a relatively inexpensive and easy-access form of entertainment. The popularity of comics is mostly due to their convenience and versatility (Mayfield et al., 2001; Taylor & Greve, 2006). Compared to other forms of entertainment (for example movies, performing arts, live music, pay TV), comic books are quite inexpensive; they can be purchased in a variety of outlets that are quite easy to access (most often in newsstands); consumption requires no technological infrastructure or literacy and it can occur wherever readers prefer, without many constraints. Furthermore, the specific artistic format (an original combination of texts and drawings) makes comics very easy to comprehend and appreciate by diverse audiences in both national and international markets, cutting across age, gender, race, education, income and lifestyles segments (Belk, 1987; Spiggle, 1996). The versatility of comics is mostly due to the variety of genres characterizing the industry (Western, crime, mystery, adult, horror, fantasy and superhero being among the most popular) and the variety of individual characters within the same genre, each one with its loyal readers and fan base (Jones & Jacobs, 1997). The creativity of the comic-publishing industry and the popularity of comic book characters make comics a rich provider of content for other entertainment industries as well, like feature films, television programs, videogames, toys and theme parks (Elberse, 2011). To corroborate this, in 1979 toy makers indicated that toys based on cartoon characters sold about 10-20% better than others (Johnson, 1979). What is more, in 1998 Marvel‟s revenues came from toy sales (77%), from licensing Marvel characters (4%), and only 19% from comics (Raviv, 2002). Despite the importance of the industry, scholarly marketing research on comic books is extremely limited compared to other entertainment industries. The few studies on comics investigate their contribution to the diffusion of social values across different mass audiences (Belk, 1987; Spiggle, 1996). To our knowledge there is no study aiming at exploring the concept of the success of comic books and its determinants. By focusing on comic books based on superheroes, our research investigates the meaning of success and the antecedents that 189 http://ibr.ccsenet.org International Business Research Vol. 9, No. 11; 2016 affect it, regardless of whether they refer to creative or marketing choices. Specifically, among the whole range of possible antecedents, we aim to better understand the humanization of superheroes. During the „60s this process began as a creative intuition of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby of Marvel Comic Groups, but soon humanization became not only a main point of difference of the brand, but also a canon of the whole genre (Sassiene, 1994; Taylor & Greeve, 2006). Since then, Marvel superheroes have human flaws, real problems, and they act in real cities, totally different from the previous godlike superheroes (Collins, 2009). In the recent years, Marvel Comics has diversified its range of superheroes, by introducing Hispanic, African, and Korean superheroes, and also female and black ones (Dockterman, 2016). For writers, balancing the human daily experiences and superhero extraordinary ones is how they best express their creativity (Sassiene, 1994; Harvey, 1996; Jones & Jacobs, 1997), which identifies the “revisionary superhero narrative” (Klock, 2002). The power of identification with superheroes has always been regarded as a powerful driver both for children and adults (Frank, 1944; Rapp, Ogilvie, & Bachrach, 2015), especially for its support in entering into new markets (Pomerantz, 2013; Sakoui & Palmeri, 2016). Although the humanization of superheroes is considered to be at the root of the success of Marvel, and generally of the whole genre, there is a lack of knowledge with regard to the features of comic books that make superheroes more closely resemble human beings, and their effects on success in this industry. Our research addresses both of these questions. We opted for the superhero genre for two main reasons. First, superhero comics are truly a global entertainment product generating huge volumes and wide appeal (Mayfield et al., 2001). Second, superheroes represent the most relevant source of creative content for other industries (Taylor & Greve, 2006; Elberse, 2011), which means their influence is expanding beyond the traditional industry and providing an interesting field to investigate typical marketing policies based on contamination. Given the scarcity of prior studies on the topic, we adopted a quali-quantitative research design. In the first step we interviewed five experts in the field in order to get a deeper insight into the drivers of success in the comics industry, with particular regard to the level of humanization of superheroes. The interviews show that monthly sales depend on many variables, as with any other entertainment industry. Examples are the artist‟s skills and abilities, which build reader loyalty, and initiatives aiming at generating curiosity in the general audience, that is films, reboots, specials, and events. At the same time, sales are also expected to depend to a great extent on the level of humanization of superheroes, which is determined by their physical appearance, abilities, social condition, and the narrative contest of the story. We have developed four main hypotheses. Our results show that writers‟ creativity is mostly devoted to balancing human and superhuman features of characters within the single story, and that is what affects sales performances. Then, the second step was to design a quantitative model in which the link between these antecedents and sales are tested. We built a database with all the issues of the Ultimate Spider-Man series, a leading comic book in the market. For each issue we ran a content analysis of the story to code its level of humanization by recording whether it applies specific creative choices able to make humanization concrete. Then we included the results of the content analysis together with objective data regarding marketing decisions in a predictive model of sales. Our findings show that many of the control variables have significant effects on sales, as expected, indicating that monthly issue sales are influenced by the overall market and previous issue sales, as well as by some marketing tools such as the quality of the issue and the price. Other variables are not significant. More interesting, higher levels of humanization of superheroes, conveyed by their physical appearance and the use of their superpowers, do not affect sales. On the contrary, sales are only partially driven by the superheroes‟ social condition and the narrative context, both playing a less powerful role than expected. Thus, a composite framework of humanization effects on sales emerges, giving rise to new questions to ask in the future. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. First, we provide an overview of the distinguishing characteristics of the superhero comic book market. Second, we present the qualitative empirical analysis and the development of our hypotheses. The third section describes the quantitative analysis run to test our hypotheses. Finally, after discussing the results of our analysis, we point out the contributions of our study to extant knowledge and we provide guidelines for future research. 2. The US Superhero Comic Book Industry Superheroes are the most representative genre of the US comic-publishing industry (Jones & Jacobs, 1997; Mayfield et al., 2001; Taylor & Greve, 2006). Indeed, between 1992 and the first
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